Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/334

288 been told, that there is a price set upon my head. One of my students, a malpractitioner, has been heard to say that he would follow us to the grave. He has already reached my husband. While my husband and I were in Washington and Philadelphia last winter, we were obliged to guard against poison, the same symptoms apparent at my husband's death constantly attending us. And yet the one who was planning the evil against us was in Boston the whole time. To-day a lady, active in forwarding the good of our college, told me that she had been troubled almost constantly with arsenical poison symptoms, and is now treating them constantly as I directed her. Three days ago one of my patients died, and the doctor said he died from arsenic, and yet there were no material symptoms of poison.

The "Doctor" Eastman whom Mrs. Eddy quotes as corroborating her theory that Mr. Eddy died from arsenic was not a graduate of any medical school, nor is there any evidence that he had ever studied at one, though the then lax medical laws of Massachusetts did not prevent him from writing M.D. after his name. He was a director of Mrs. Eddy's college, and his name appeared in her curriculum as an authority to be consulted on instrumental surgery, which was not taught in her classes. He was also dean of the so-called "Bellevue Medical College," which was chartered under the same undiscriminating act under which Mrs. Eddy's college was chartered, and which was later reported as a fraudulent institution and closed.

In the Christian Science Journal, June, 1885, Mrs. Eddy thus explains Mr. Eastman's connection with her college, but neglects to say that he was one of the original directors:

Charles J. Eastman, M.D., was never a student of mine, and, to my knowledge, never claimed to be a Christian Scientist. At the time Mr. Rice alludes to he was a homeopathic physician and dean of the Bellevue